Left Party leader in Thuringia Bodo Ramelow took office yesterday as the party’s first state governor.

His election followed lengthy coalition talks hedged about by nerves over the party’s origins from its coalition partners.

Just weeks after the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Thuringia’s regional legislature elected Mr Ramelow with a single-seat majority in the state capital Erfurt.

Mr Ramelow has built a coalition with two centre-left parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens.

His election ends a 24-year reign over Thuringia by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party.

The 58-year-old was a West German native who went east as a trade union official when Germany reunited in 1990 and later joined the Left Party’s predecessor.

The Left Party has already served as a junior coalition partner in three other states.

It traces its roots back to Erich Honecker’s East German Socialist Unity Party and will administer Thuringia in a new three-way coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats and the Greens.

But the prospect of it having a state governor, an influential position in federalised Germany, has drawn criticism, most prominently from President Joachim Gauck.

The Social Democrats, Germany’s main centre-left party and currently junior partners in Ms Merkel’s national government, have been keen to stress that the change in Thuringia does not imply a future left-wing German federal government.

In Berlin, the Social Democrats and Left Party have major differences on national issues including foreign policy and defence.